


Red is the First Colour of Spring

by DoreyG



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Antagonism - characters don't like each other but nobody else understands them this well, Character Makes Better Decisions Than In Canon, Enemies to Lovers - An enemy tenderly treats character's injuries that the enemy inflicted, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22957099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: I awoke to fetid fingers probing my wounds, my most loathed enemy crouched over me with an expression of intense concentration upon his loathed face.
Relationships: Victor Frankenstein/Frankenstein's Creature
Comments: 8
Kudos: 129
Collections: Writing Rainbow Red





	Red is the First Colour of Spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolf_of_Lilacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/gifts).



I awoke to fetid fingers probing my wounds, my most loathed enemy crouched over me with an expression of intense concentration upon his loathed face.

"What are you doing?" I asked weakly, dumbly because my tongue felt like an iron weight in my mouth. I attempted to kick out at him, but managed only a sluggish twitch due to the severity of my injuries and the biting cold around us. "Cease your interfering, you foul creature."

"Be quiet, " he ordered, short for once. And then let out a far more characteristic growl as I continued to weakly struggle, and reached out to effortlessly pin me down. "And stop moving. You may not believe it, the cold has obviously blunted your wits alongside your virility, but I'm trying to help you."

"In what way could you possibly aid me?" I asked, a strong feeling of incredulity rising in my breast. How dare the Creature do this too, tell such bald faced lies when I was already entirely in his power? "You caused my injuries yourself! You have ruined my life at every possible turn! You have been a blot on the world ever since you were created! You cannot expect me to believe in your good intentions now."

"You were the one who created me, loathsome fool, so the only one you have to blame is-" he started hotly, and then cut himself off with a heavy and heaving sigh. He stared down at me for a long moment, his hideously bulging eyes unreadable, and then lifted his shoulders in a dismissive gesture and returned to my injuries. "I do not wish to argue, not now."

I stared at him in disbelief, briefly struck wordless by his arrogance. Was brought back to myself only by a flutter of pain, as his filthy fingers pressed a little too harshly against one of my numerous cuts. "If you do not wish to argue, you should not have acted so appallingly for so long! You should not have been the anathema to everything good-!"

"I've been thinking, " he interrupted, drawing back from me as he did to. To my profound surprise, I glimpsed a pot of perfectly sound ointment placed carefully at his thigh. "How long do you think that we have been doing this, my loathed creator?"

"How long have you been a fetid creature, you mean, dragging the world into greater infamy with your every poisonous breath? " I grumbled, but something on his face made me pause and take stock. I wouldn't have willingly given him anything important for all the world, but this seemed like such a simple question to answer. "I cannot recall exactly, but it must have been several years now."

"It is approaching five, to my own dazed recollection," he informed me, and to my profound surprise I noticed a certain kind of melancholy upon his bruised face. "And in that time what have either of us accomplished? You have successfully made me a pariah, a loathsome creature scorned by all and afforded not a shred of affection. In return I have ripped all tenderness from you, taken brother and friend and wife from your arms and left you with ash.You, at least, started with everything. Now neither of us have anything."

"I still have far more than you, gross beast! And my sins are far less in number!" I hesitated for a long moment as he obviously struggled not to rise to my provocation. Shifted uncomfortably on the ground as I looked up at him "...What are you saying?"

"Simply this: that we could've both achieved marvels. You created me to be a new Adam, and if given the chance I could've rose to your expectations and worked to make the world an Eden once again. You yourself are not entirely lacking in intelligence or tender feelings, you could've strived alongside me and made things so much better than they actually are." He lifted his shoulders again, kept his eyes upon my face as he started to slather the ointment onto my wounds. "And instead we are here with nothing, having driven each other to the end of the world."

I winced initially at his touch, but he was shockingly gentle. I soon found myself lapsing into it, not relaxing but also no longer quite expecting the fatal blow. "There was no other option. It was either death for both of us, or infamy forevermore. "

"There was another option," he said hotly, not pausing in his ministrations. "There is still another option, my foolish master. We could lay all this aside. Bury our enmity, here at the edge of all things, and move on with our lives at last. Actually live, instead of making a fetish of death and a bride of misery. "

I… Hesitated.

I had spent so much time in my miserable head these past few years, but I had never actually paused to think. I had just pressed on, convinced utterly of my own superiority over the pathetic being before me. I had lost everything - William, Henry, Elizabeth, all occupation and succor. And while it was the Creature's hands that struck the killing blow, it was the heat of my hatred that had forced him.

I was tired. I didn't want to hate anymore. I didn't want to maintain this struggle, when further south spring was beginning and tentative flowers were starting to sprout and new life was starting to emerge from every nest. I wanted to live.

"I am in your power now, and so have no choice but to acquiesce to your strange demands," I said stubbornly, unwilling to let him see how deeply he had affected me. But then forced myself to raise my eyes, and meet him as an equal at last. "But when I am recovered, if I do indeed recover… Perhaps allowing myself to think on your words would not be the worst thing in the world."

I had never seen him smile as a man before, but he did so now and somehow the expression was enough to transform him into almost the paragon I had so longed for him to be. He wordlessly bent to my wounds again, and the world shifted onto a new axis as easily as that.


End file.
